Abstract:
The Southern Appalachian Assessment (SAA) was a cooperative multi-agency effort to assess the environmental condition of the Southern Appalachian region. The SAA was described as the ecological equivalent of a thorough medical checkup. It has often been cited as an example of how governmental agencies should work together on a regular basis, within and across jurisdictions.

The Southern ... Appalachian Man and the Biosphere (SAMAB) program coordinated the SAA efforts of Federal and state agencies, universities, special interest groups, and private citizens. Four interdisciplinary teams assessed the status of terrestrial, atmospheric, aquatic, and social/cultural/economic resources.

The SAA database was built primarily with publicly available data from Federal and State agencies. Converting the data to a common, useable format was a major undertaking. GIS provided the vehicle to accomplish this task. All SAA geospatial datasets were transformed to an Albers Equal-Area Conic Projection. Some 1500 organizations and individuals received copies of the CD-ROM set, and many more have downloaded datasets from the website.

An illustrated five-volume report on the SAA was published in July 1996. Some 11,000 copies were distributed to governmental offices, elected officials, environmental practitioners, researchers, educators, and interested citizens. The report still is available in portable-document format (PDF) at the SAMAB website.

The SAA database has become a unique resource of great value to scientists, planners, decision-makers, and citizens in all sectors of the regional community. The database has been used extensively for many subsequent studies by individual SAMAB member agencies and third parties. It has often been used for demonstrations of GIS technologies. Educators use it for instruction and class work assignments, and many students use it for thesis projects.

Quality
The Southern Appalachian Man and the Biosphere Program (SAMAB) makes these data publicly available on an "as-is" basis.

Although SAMAB and its associates strive to assure that their digital datasets are accurate, useful, and current at the time of their compilation, SAMAB makes not warranties--expressed or ... implied--as to the accuracy, completeness, or usability of these data or any accompanying metadata and other support files. The act of distribution shall not constitute any such warranty, and no responsibility is assumed by SAMAB in the use of this data, software, or related materials.

Neither SAMAB nor any of its members, partners, sponsors, contractors, or data providers shall be responsible for any claims attributable to errors, omissions, or other inaccuracies. In no event shall they be liable for direct, indirect, special, incidental, or consequential loss or damage of any nature caused to any person, party, or entity resulting from any use of these data.

The recipients of a dataset shall bear full responsibility to determine the fitness of the data for each and every intended use. Some known usability issues are mentioned under "Use Constraints" in the Identification section of the present metadata document. Careful attention should also be paid to the contents of the metadata files that may be associated with individual datasets.

These disclaimers apply to use of SAMAB data alone as well as to aggregate use with data from other sources.

SAMAB makes these data available to the public free of charge. SAMAB does not countenance secondary distribution of these data. Recipients may not assert any proprietary rights to any of these data, nor represent them to anyone as other than free SAMAB data.

Access Constraints
None in principle, but during times of heavy demand that threatens to exceed system resources, the host computer may limit the number of visitors granted access. SAMAB reserves the right to provide preferential access to users from its member agencies during such periods.

Use Constraints
Use of these data shall constitute the user's implicit acceptance of all Distribution Constraints and liability disclaimers set forth in the Distribution section of the present metadata document.

The datasets, as compiled and processed by SAMAB, were intended to provide an overview of resource conditions at ... a multi-state regional level. They were not intended--and probably are unsuitable--for detailed local analyses.

To avoid the risk of misinterpretation, invalid results, and erroneous conclusions, the users must consider original map scale, collection methodology, currency of data, and any other conditions specific to every data element and each dataset as a whole. The user must be aware that errors and conditions originating from physical sources involved in developing a dataset may be reflected in the data, and that the digital processing performed during preparation, storage, and transmission of the dataset may have exacerbated such errors and/or introduced additional ones.

The user should pay careful attention to the contents of the metadata file associated with the dataset, if available. However, the user must be aware that some of the information in the metadata itself may be erroneous and that reliable accuracy information is unavailable for many of the datasets. Furthermore, the user is cautioned that knowledge about the accuracy of original data sources from which SAMAB datasets were derived may not be directly applicable to the SAMAB data because of the reprojection and rubbersheeting that was often necessary to make major features and the georeferencing of data layers from different sources match each other for overlay analysis.